Ugh, It's been far too long since I've posted.

That whole idea of giving myself an extra week because I had an extra two went out the window.

I'm finishing the third piece right now. That puts me two weeks behind schedule overall, the director is waiting on the "drafts" (which are ready to rehearse and record as is), and my ensemble is getting antsy. But all in all, as long as I don't drag my feet from here on out, i'm right on schedule in the end.

I have a bad habit of just not doing things from time to time or over-estimating what I can do in very short time spans. I may be able to write a 32-bar lead sheet in 30 minutes for a rehearsal in an hour, but these are a bit more intricate. However, I can still polish off 30 measures for a mini-symphony orchestra score in about 2 hours, so when I set down to work, I still make a good pace for myself.

Also, that whole "I hate Finale 2009" thing I was going through...over it. Finale 2009 is now just as easy for me to use now that I've gotten acquainted with it, and it's actually more useful in some respects. I still don't like where some of the menus went, but I figured out how to select and copy one measure. But I still can't figure out how to copy it x number of times at once. Small victories.

Rehearsals start this week...which reminds me...I need to email the ensemble.

I finished the first score entirely this afternoon and created the first audio file for the director to practice and choreograph from. The export as audio file feature on Finale now is terribly useful and I can't get over it. Export it as a .wav file after playing with the voluems for each instrument (rough ideas of where I want volumes and blend at)...and then, open it up in Sony Sound Forge (9.0?) to fix the levels and such, and then saved it as another uncompressed .wav and converted to an .mp3 for ease of transfering online. Girlfriend likes the first two that I finished earlier today (first person to hear them, even before the director) and the last one will be ready when she wakes up in the morning.

Ok, enough time here I suppose, back to work...just about done.